Daily Prompt: Golden Hour

6AM. I was up at 6 this morning. In fact, many week end mornings, I’m up at 5.  Unfortunately, I was not up early to hunt today. I had to be at work a little before 8, and we were wearing Halloween costumes in today, so I had to put on my makeup for that. Today was our last public golf scramble, and the course was full for the day with 150 people. I made 50+ bloody maries this morning. And I make a mean Bloody Mary.

First light.

But I like 0600. Granted, it’s far easier to go out and hunt in the evening. You’re already awake, you don’t have to leave a warm bed. It’s light out already. But when I do manage to drag my ass out from under the covers, stuff my feet into boots, and pull on my camouflage? I go out, I usually spend a couple hours chilly, and then I come back and have the rest of the day. There’s something about being able to get up, go hunt for 3 or 4 hours, and then come back before it’s even lunch time. Most early morning hunts, I even beat my caffeine headache home.

Probably taken around 6.

Salmon fishing Sunrise. In August, this was probably a bit closer to 5am.

If I’m up that early, we’re typically after some waterfowl. We’ll hunt deer that early if we’re already up north, and it’s rifle season. Then it’s a short jaunt to the stand, no big deal. But down in Madison, it’s a 30-35 minute ride to the public land we hunt. So a person would need to be up around 4AM to be dressed and out the door by 4:30, to make it over there a little after 5, so that you’re there an hour before dawn at this time of year. It’d be pointless to go to that trouble only to be late and scare out deer. Hence, the quick drive down to duck hunt. Most bird movement happens for us within 45 minutes of first light. Sometimes there’s a bump in activity around 9, but it’s hit or miss.

So, on a Saturday or Sunday morning, I’m usually already bundled up, sitting outside, gun (or bow) in hand by 6AM. Sometimes, early in the season, I’ve already taken a couple shots by then. I like 6AM. I like 6AM especially if I made it to bed around 9 the night before.

 

Daily Prompt: Goals

Once again, I came to WordPress during my morning internet jaunt, aware that with the return of only romping outdoors on weekends, I have much less to write about during the week. And once again, the Daily Prompt was something that wouldn’t seem out of place here. I swear they know exactly when I’ve gotten all excited about writing and put my posts up immediately, instead of patiently spacing them out.

So, the Prompt asked- did I set any goals when I started this blog, and if so, have I achieved any? I think the only concrete goal I really set, besides Matt wanting to get Internet Famous,  was that I wanted to keep doing my outdoors hobbies, only I wanted to write about doing it. And put up pictures, obviously.

These posts are the equivalent of me sitting on a log, staring at the water, and swinging my feet.

Looking at the topics I’ve covered over the last 5-6 months, I would say yes, I achieved that goal. I’ve written about fishing (ice, fly, and otherwise), turkey hunting, and what we do with the animals we end up harvesting. On top of all the activities actually done outdoors, I’ve also sort of expanded the blog to include covering things like refinishing our old camper, reporting on the new things Matt dragged home from various outdoor retail outlets (see the Toys tag), and writing in detail about the acquisition and renovation of the Ditch Boat (see the What Have I Gotten Myself Into tag and the Boat Renovation category). That’s fortunate, because otherwise I’d only be posting once a week, if that in winter.

As for goals I didn’t spell out in writing? I think a big one was that I like to write about successes, even if I am a total beginner at so much of this stuff. So, in that arena there’s some room for improvement. Just take a look at my Fail tag, and you’ll see that more often than not, the critters win. Which is why they call it fishing, not catching, etc. However, it’s still a small tag after 5 or 6 months. Just wait until deer and duck season, particularly archery deer. And we’ve got the entire summer of fishing to do yet.

Another unwritten goal I had was to improve upon my writing and possibly my picture taking (I wouldn’t call what I do photography). I’d like to get this blog to a point where maybe someone would find it Freshly Pressable. Admittedly, I would need to have a big tick mark to put into the Big Success Story column to make that easier. It would be easier to write well and in an excited way if I had a big success story to tell. I’m not at a point yet where I can write eloquently about big fails.

I think keeping it simple and continuing my goal of writing about my hobbies as we do them is a good idea. I’ll keep the Freshly Pressed goal simmering, though.

Daily Prompt: The Million Dollar Question.

Today, the Daily Prompt was something that wouldn’t seem wholly out of place at this blog. Why do I blog?

My About the Blog page has the short answer version of this part. I had been sitting in my blind all Fall, whether for waterfowl or deer, and it had been slowly creeping up on me each day. I should be doing something with all this activity. I did some casual investigating  googling for outdoors blogs by women or by couples. At the time, I didn’t find many (I have since found a good handful more here on WordPress). One day, sitting in the passenger seat of Matt’s truck, I told him I was thinking about writing. He jumped all over the idea, admittedly because his immediate idea was that we/he would immediately become Internet Famous, and either get to test out (and keep) awesome equipment, or get a TV show. I had to throw water on that idea (and still have to, occasionally), as the only bloggers I know who achieved that had been blogging for years, and are way better photographers than I. Like Ree Drummond. He still hopes this will happen. I tell him we’ll need way nicer equipment and better skillz.

A longer, more personal answer, however, is that when I started this blog, I was working at one restaurant job I don’t care much about (I still have it), and one office job I hated (I left back in February). My boss at the office made me feel stupid almost every day. She had repeatedly questioned my intelligence. She marveled that I had attended college, and that I managed to transfer in to UW-Madison. When I mentioned I had dropped out a few years ago, she assumed out loud it was grades and poor time management (it was money, my GPA was about 3.7). She treated my hunting and fishing hobbies as if it made me an illiterate barbarian. Besides the things she said about me, there were hundreds of little non-vocal things. I needed something creative or intellectual. I needed to not feel stupid. I was actually beginning to believe I was, after only 2 or 3 months there.

When I had still been in college at NIU, I had loved writing. Whether for my one English pre-req, my 25 page political science term papers (history and integration of the European Union and Eurozone, woo!), my German classes, my Russian classes, the classes for my international development minor. I took a 6-credit class through UW-Madison in Fall 2011 that was taught entirely in German. I still loved multiple page German papers (even though I did not care for Kafka’s Metamorphosis). According to my professors, I’m pretty good at it. I like to think I’m not a terrible writer.

Without college classes as a framework, blogging seems to me like the best way to get that done, even if it’s non-fiction, informal essays about what my boyfriend and I did this weekend, or what I cooked last night (more on that coming up).  I halfway hope writing this, even with self editing, makes me a better essayist. On top of that, I like reading what other outdoorswomen (and men) put out there. I like being outside, I like to talk about it, and the girls I bartend with probably get a little sick of hearing it. Hunting may not be popular or well-liked everywhere, but it’s an important tradition to me, and my region of the US. Conservation is also important to me.  I’m one more (small) voice speaking for the trees, lakes, hills, and animals.

On top of all that: we screw up a lot. I laugh about it, and hopefully so does everyone else. After the obligatory forehead slap following our glaringly obvious mistakes.